18 comments:

Ohhhhhh! Well, when you put it that way, it all makes so much sense! I thought I had to learn physics and stuff to know why it wouldn't be possible, but I guess that's not necessary when you can just reason from pleasant-sounding statements!

Silas, since your remark is so obnoxious, I was going to delete it, but then I decided it was a much better punishment for you to publish it.

I was talking about how time travel ruins *narratives* that invoke it. In response, you mock me for not studying the *physics* of time travel! What the heck would its physical impossibility have to do with its effect on narrative structures? Someone can travel to Alpha Centauri in one year in a story without ruining the narrative structure, despite its physical impossibility.

Not only are your forays into obnoxious mode obnoxious, they also seem to lower your IQ about 60 points.

"It's a Wonderful Life" uses the same plot device as "A Christmas Story" where a supernatural element takes the main character through the past and present/future. It might not involve a time machine, but it is time travel.

The main character in "It's a Wonderful Life" is also unable to act during his visit through time. I think the key elements that make the visions of the future in "A Christmas Carol" and "Wonderful Life" truly time-travel are that the visions are supernatural and the main character is transported to the actual scene.

This is opposed to, say, a day dreaming sequence where someone imagines a future possibility or a what-if historical scenario.

traumerei: A Christmas Carol: This cannot be the *real* future he goes to, because these things are never going to happen. And, *if* it were real, it wouldn't be the future, since, for Scrooge, it would have happened already. (And this is what I mean when I say real time travel makes nonsense of any plot.)

And the trip into a past that did occur? A Christmas Carol makes it clear that these were not visions but that Scrooge was physically transported from his room and into the past - albeit as an observer. Would you not consider that time-travel?

The contradiction involved in future time travel is an understandable enough objection. In that case, "nonsense" would be a better descriptor than a vision (though steve and I are still able to make general sense of the plot).